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The bicycle industry has been accused of getting bogged down in tradition on occasion. But recent riding trends and the tech that fuels them can give us all hope that riding a bike will continue to be super fun and open to all types of riding styles. Looking at bicycle industry trends for 2023 gives us an idea of where we’re heading and what we can expect in future.
Where’s the bike industry heading?
One development that we can fully get behind is the movement of bike brands away from designing solely for professionals, and then trickling those products down to consumers. With the explosion of off-road, gravel, and particularly e-bikes, a lot of great innovation is focusing on products that the amateur cyclist will truly want to use.
E-bikes just keep improving
With the increased interest in outdoor activities in general and cycling in particular during the covid-19 pandemic, bicycle trends 2023 prove that the e-bike has inevitably grown in popularity. It proves to be extremely useful for riders who find riding a non-e-bike difficult for health or other reasons. But an e-bike can also be super fun for longtime cyclists, commuters, and people looking to test the two-wheeled waters. As the various quality manufacturers plow more R&D into their own e-bike offering, it has meant that owning and riding an e-bike can be attractive for every type of ride.
Producing e-bikes that are light and nimble has been key to this development. Specialist e-bike system companies combining their knowledge and resources with traditional bicycle manufacturers has resulted in a wide range of lightweight, high performance options for all types of bicycle terrains, from mountain bike downhill and enduro riding to gravel and pure road types of bicycles.
Ebikemotion and Fazua led the way with their pedal assist systems, and with Pinarello’s recent switch to the TQ-HPR50 system using its Harmonic Pin Ring Transmission (HPR), e-road and gravel bikes are getting lighter, more responsive with a more natural motor engagement. And now that famed French brand Mavic has announced its entry into the market for e-bike pedal assist systems, we can only expect even better, lighter, more natural feeling e-bikes in the future.
Whatever your reasons for riding a pedal assist e-bike, with the newest technology, you’ll be able to feel like you are on a bike with a constant tailwind.
All-Road as the new Gravel
The proliferation of gravel bikes and accessories has definitely been a theme within cycling for the past several years and it remains one of the main bicycle trends in 2023. It has encouraged people to get out and ride in unfamiliar territory, not tied to a municipal road network. A lot of people consider the dangerous conditions cyclists typically face on city streets a deterrent for cycling, encouraging riding on less used gravel and dirt roads in many ways helps lower the barrier to becoming a bicycle rider.
We’ve long had mountain bikes of course, if we wanted to ride off-road. But most mountain bikes, especially those with modern, progressive geometry, do not work so well on paved roads. So if you wanted to go for a mountain bike ride, unless you are lucky enough to live right next door to a trail network, you’d likely have to get in your car and drive to a trailhead.
Gravel bikes connect those two dots: they are able to handle light trails and poorly paved roads while still being snappy enough to ride on the city roads you need to get to the quiet gravel roads. But what do you do if you don’t live close to that many gravel trails, but you still want to be able to ride the few gravel paths you have available?
Enter the All-Road category
Among the major bicycle industry trends, more and more brands are seeing the need to fill this space where people want tire width capability on what is more traditionally a road bike geometry and set-up. The trend is visible in 2023 thanks to marquee brands like Colnago and Pinarello releasing All-Road bikes.
An All-Road bike straddles the lines between road/endurance/gravel. If we’re talking venn diagrams, All-Roads make use of the similar geometries found on more comfort and endurance oriented road bikes, while allowing for tire widths up to 32, 35 and even 40mm tires.
Admittedly, a true gravel grinder looking to fit some singletrack into a ride will not be impressed by 35mm tires. But that’s not where an All-Road bike is meant to go. These are bikes that can handle some hardpack gravel and poorly paved roads with ease while still being light and snappy enough to roll easily on smooth tarmac, and fast enough to join up with your local weekly chain gang for a Saturday morning hammerfest.
Mellowing the of trend to wider road tires
If you started cycling any time before 2010, you’ll probably remember riding in 22 or 23mm tires was the norm. You may even go far enough back to have regularly ridden on 19mm tires. However, starting around 2015, more research into rolling resistance and tire performance indicated that, contrary to previous assumptions, wider tires inflated to lower levels are faster.
The issue of tire pressure and width warrants an entire blog of its own. But for the purpose of bike industry trends for 2023, we’re seeing a stabilization in just how wide road tires are going. Though there certainly are proponents for road tires as wide as 35mm and to say there is a genuine consensus around the issue would be fantasy, manufactures for road wheels and tires seem to be homing in on a 28-30mm tire paired with an appropriate internal rim width (around 20mm internal rim width for 28mm tires and closer to 25mm internal rim width for tires 30mm and wider).
Most pros are racing with 28mm tires for anything not including Roubaix-style cobbles. For amateurs who don’t mind the little extra weight would likely benefit from the added comfort and grip 30mm tires would offer. And the eye of the needle remains frame manufacturers and how much rubber can their frames accommodate before they start needing to make design changes like dropping chainstays. There’s still room for a lot of debate, but our guess is that most frame manufacturers will settle around measured clearance for 32mm tires for road oriented bikes.
Expansion of 3D printing
Though still relatively rare, 3D printed parts have been used for several years in the cycling industry. Up till now the technology has been used mostly in small parts – think of the seat clamp on the Pinarello Dogma F Disc – but in the past year we have seen larger and larger components being 3D printed. And then Pinarello, in collaboration with the UK company Metron who specialize in 3D printing for the cycling industry, came out with the Hour Record breaking Bolide that Filiopo Ganna rode.
3D printing was used on another Hour Record bike when Alex Dowsett failed in his attempt to break the record for a second time in December of 2021. The Factor HANZO that he used had a 3D printed rear triangle. For the past several years, 3D printing aero extensions for time trial and track racing bars has been pretty common among the elite, and that is a trend in the bicycle industry that will only increase.
Colorado’s own Moots Bikes has been 3D printing their titanium dropouts for many years. And components like saddles, stems, handlebars and even cranks are now regularly hitting the market.
So when will you be able to buy a 3D printed bike? Well, if you have $65,000 laying around, you can buy your own version of the Pinarello Bolide F HR 3D now. But if you don’t race on the track, there are small companies experimenting with the process and even going the crowdfunding route to make their design a reality.
However, it might be a while before you are scrolling through several 3D printed frame options on the Wrench Science website. But this is certainly a case of “watch this space”.
We don’t have a crystal ball, but keeping our finger on the pulse of the industry, several bicycle trends in 2023 become apparent. Trends in the bike industry frequently have quite a long tail, so we expect things like e-bikes, tire widths, gravel bikes, all-road bikes, and 3D printing to continue to be topics in the seasons to come.
